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Readers!

 

It is now July, time once again to celebrate the start of this webpage in 2010 with my annual July fund-raising campaign.

 

This year I celebrate the fifteenth anniversary since I began Behind the Black. During that time I have done more than 33,000 posts, mostly covering the global space industry and the related planetary and astronomical science that comes from it. Along the way I have also felt compelled as a free American citizen to regularly post my thoughts on the politics and culture of the time, partly because I think it is important for free Americans to do so, and partly because those politics and that culture have a direct impact on the future of our civilization and its on-going efforts to explore and eventually colonize the solar system.

 

You can’t understand one without understanding the other.

 

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SLS static fire test today

NASA will make its second attempt today complete a full 8 minute long static fire test of the core stage of its SLS rocket.

The two-hour window for the test begins at 3 pm (Eastern). You can watch it on NASA TV.

To put it mildly, a lot rides on this test. If anything should go wrong, the future of the SLS rocket will be grim indeed. And should all go well NASA will still be under grave schedule pressure. Though the actual first launch of SLS using this core stage is presently set for the fall, NASA has admitted that they need to review that schedule once today’s test is completed.

Preparations for the upcoming test are going well, NASA Acting Administrator Steve Jurczyk said in an interview March 17.

,,,If the test does go well, he said the agency should be able to soon confirm a launch date for the Artemis 1 mission, which will use the core stage being tested at Stennis. That mission is currently projected to launch in November. “I think that, within probably just a few weeks, they’ll take a look at the schedule one more time and confirm whether we can make November of this year or if we need to go out a little bit.”

The agency is trying hard to meet that November date, but no one will be surprised if the flight ends up happening in January ’22. Any later than that and they will have a new problem, as the already stacked solid rocket boosters must fly within a year of stacking, and this process began back in December ’20.

Genesis cover

On Christmas Eve 1968 three Americans became the first humans to visit another world. What they did to celebrate was unexpected and profound, and will be remembered throughout all human history. Genesis: the Story of Apollo 8, Robert Zimmerman's classic history of humanity's first journey to another world, tells that story, and it is now available as both an ebook and an audiobook, both with a foreword by Valerie Anders and a new introduction by Robert Zimmerman.

 

The print edition can be purchased at Amazon. from any other book seller, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. The ebook is available everywhere for $5.99 (before discount) at amazon, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. If you buy it from ebookit you don't support the big tech companies and the author gets a bigger cut much sooner.


The audiobook is also available at all these vendors, and is also free with a 30-day trial membership to Audible.
 

"Not simply about one mission, [Genesis] is also the history of America's quest for the moon... Zimmerman has done a masterful job of tying disparate events together into a solid account of one of America's greatest human triumphs."--San Antonio Express-News

4 comments

  • eddie willers

    Looks like they made it the full eight minutes, but I must say, it looks like this test stand costs more than the whole of the Starship program to date.

  • Jeff Wright

    I’d like to see its use offered to Super-Heavy and Bezos’ rockets

  • Dick Eagleson

    The big Stennis test stand SLS was tested on wouldn’t work for either Super Heavy or New Glenn. At least not as is. The stand was originally built to test the Saturn V 1st stage which was kerolox. Since then, it has had LH2 capability added in order to test the SLS core stage. To test either Super Heavy or New Glenn, it would have to be significantly refitted to handle LCH4 as both these vehicles use methalox engines.

    Super Heavy is also very large, would be very difficult to move to Stennis and has its own launch infrastructure – which will be able to support static fires – already furiously a-building in Boca Chica. Blue Origin already has another Apollo-era test stand in Huntsville it is refitting to test BE-4 engines for New Glenn. The complete 1st stage can be static-fired at its LC-36 launch site.

    Both companies have used Stennis test facilities in the past and may well do so again in future, but testing complete 1st stages there doesn’t look to be on the agenda for either firm, mainly for logistics reasons.

  • eddie willers

    I don’t know how the Stannis Test Center has evaded my knowledge all these years. I went to the Wikipedia page (which you can usually trust for non-political entries) and see the plan began in 1961 and was operational in 1966.

    No wonder it looked so expensive. It was/is!

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